“... shot through with personal grudges and unverifiable anecdotes – portrayed a deceitful, self-deceiving man; Thompson introduced Frost’s Selected Letters by noting his ‘manner of seeming to be so natural, direct and confiding in all forms of communication; but he was never as natural as he seemed.’ Sheehy, Richardson and Faggen are keen to set ...”

“... he wrote in a newspaper article in 1917, to renounce lascivious aestheticism and exoticism, the self-betraying tendency to barbarism it pandered to in an unbridled way, taboo crazes in clothes styles and foolish infantilisms in its art, and adopt an attitude of noble rejection of anthropophagic sculpture and South American harbour-saloon dances … Yes, let ...”

“... worked on making the plane at home – was an unusual man. He had a seriousness of purpose and a self-directed, unphoney Ohio groundedness, and he was extraordinarily calm about loudly and repeatedly being called a liar and a fake. The entirely unfounded refusal to believe in his feats had no effect on him. He knew what he and Orville had done, knew that the ...”

“... that it reminds us, in the face of much contrary temptation, not to underestimate Amis’s knowing self-awareness about himself and his writing. Or, putting it more briefly (as he did in recording, for Larkin’s delight, his response to an unimpressive poem by John Wain): ‘Could of told you that, shitface.’ Amis was not born into the literary purple, as ...”

“... too deliberately calculated, with an unconcealed but obscure polemic intention; it is decidedly self-possessed.’ Something of the poems’ self-possession would have come from the man who wrote them. ‘Polemic intention’, too, perhaps – for Oppen was soon in the thick of Depression politics and the writing had come ...”

“... of childhood reminiscence, jazz and junk lore, obscene sexual anecdotes and fearless, often japing self-revelation – Laurie, with Pepper’s permission, asked some of his old bandmates, producers, drug dealers, prison cronies and girlfriends to add their own insightful (and often unflattering) comments. The resulting feuilleton was hailed as a poetic ...”

“... old Baths. Uncanny pleasure moved within her like a full-rigged ship As if she entered her naked self Into a silky sea of ships; Great full-masters sailed across her breasts. Her smile in the office meant the tide was full, The draught sufficient, As the great barque in its weathered colours Glides past the window, pennant flying, In its weathered ...”

“... not. A voice worn all along its seams, I ought to stop listening. I ought to stop. The mind’s self-deceptions inspire awe. Its mountains. Must I walk there alone, without a guide? I do not know the things I know, they are folded into my routines imperceptibly. I do not see what there is to be seen, the way they tear the skin off an animal and fit it to ...”

“... that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have to be more determined, more committed and more self-reliant to do well at A-level than more privileged students.’ This worthiness should be tempered by the fact that still only 60 per cent of students at Bristol are from state schools, and only 11 per cent are from working-class backgrounds, compared to a ...”

“... plunges into chaos: pro-Bush rebels seize power in West; DC in Flames’; ‘Clinton declares self President for life’; ‘Bush executes 253 New Mexico Democrats.’ And once he was in the White House: ‘Bush – “Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”’ The opening story in the compendium is ‘Half-naked Kissinger ...”

“... But what if they had? The LRB recently received an e-mail from a company called Yellow Dragon Self Defence, informing us that ‘in your line of work … there is a high risk of being assaulted, abducted, even killed. I have read in the papers of many such incidences.’ Perhaps they were thinking of the non-story of last year in which someone who ...”

“... Let’s say a gallery. Let’s say ill weather. Let’s say you’ve movedfrom L’Arbre de Fluides to La Fenêtre. Let’s say you’re not Marie,not one of the Corps de Dame. Let’s say you’ve been better loved.Let’s say that one of these, for sure, is what you came to see.*Red and black. Heart and hand. Sand and salt. You make a note.The colours a cross-hatch ...”

“... the parents. George Monger: Marriage Customs of the World Had he mastered the thin domain of self-denial, replacing the skin with sleep, an implacable snow of mothering and cold valerian, the house of Spoken Word and Christmas Morn become the castle in a fairy tale where hearts are hung to dry on fatted string, he might have guessed the limits of that ...”

“... to the black behind the shadows,             the hand-shadow being cast by his one self on the dark,             by the single lightbulb behind him the hum, his own knuckles here and the tightly clenched fingers wrapped like a bird-beak around the chalk             gripping something to bring home to the nest ...”

“... But one of the supreme gods, Indra it was, was always horny for Ahalya. He lost self-control. One day, soon as Gautama went for his river wash and prayers at the bank     Indra was like a cloud ready to burst! And burst he did by spilling down to earth as Ahalya’s husband. Exact-same copy. But hornier! Horny as Ahalya and Gautama on ...”